1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to transfer of content between a server and multiple network enabled client devices operating on different platforms over a network such as the Internet, and more particularly to rendering content in a relatively abstract format into multiple platform formats in client-side applications' user interfaces in multiple human languages.
2. Description of Related Art
The popularity of the Internet has engendered a number of devices having a capability for providing access to the Internet. As illustrated in FIG. 1, such devices include desktop and laptop computers, cellular phones and personal digital assistants (“PDAs”). The various different types of network enabled devices (“NEDs”) may each operate with a different platform format (“platform”), for example by operating with different web-based or non-web-based browser types.
The term “content” is used herein to refer to all forms of electronic content (i.e., content that may be read or processed in an electronic form), including, but not limited to, digital video, audio, photos, graphics, text and animation. When a provider of content desires to provide to different platforms access to the content, the provider may be required to build, for example, custom web pages or other content containing pages for each specific platform format. That is, the provider would need to provide pages or other content resources formatted in HyperText Markup Language (“HTML”), Wireless Markup Language (“WML”), compact HTML (“cHTML”), and so on, to conform to the device/browser display capabilities. This is both labor intensive to initially setup and difficult to maintain as changes are made to the site's data and services.
Therefore, it can be seen that there is a need for a system and method for accepting content defined in a relatively abstract format and transforming the relatively abstract format input into a specific recognized platform format for a particular device.